Three ideological psychology myths

Abstract

Social Domination Theory (SDT), developed by Sidanius and Pratto, says that in every society there are certain groups occupying hegemonic places, leaving the other groups in a second place. This position is maintained by the functioning of “ideological myths”, which can be of three kinds: sacred, paternalistic, and egalitarians. My objective is to analyze the position that psychological discipline occupies in our actual western society applying the SDT and showing how each kind of myth work in its maintaining. For that purpose I select those myths that I consider as most representatives: the sacred myth of the divinization of science, the paternalistic myth of the psychologist-pacient relation, and the equalitarian myth of the pathologization of difference, making them evident and pointing at their possible maintaining mechanisms. I use for this, among others, Göran Therborn's analysis about the functioning of ideology.